How a catering challenge at a mass community event became a lesson in what print management is really for.
Bespoke trays designed, prototyped, tested and delivered on time for a four-day mass community catering event at ExCeL London.
Compass Group’s Leith’s division had won the catering contract for a four-day community event at ExCeL London. 110,000 meals. A peak of up to 37,000 lunches in a two-hour window. The kind of operation where every single variable needs to be solved before the first guest arrives.
Their problem was the tray. Airline trays were too expensive for the volume. Off-the-shelf alternatives were not practical enough for the service workflow. Nothing on the market fit what they actually needed. So they called us.
We are not usually known for our catering. But that is rather the point.
The tray needed to do several things at once. The right compartments for a hot meal service at scale. Stack simply and safely under pressure. Fit both the service area and the catering workflow precisely. Be handleable by guests collecting multiple trays for family members. And be easily disposed of afterwards.
None of the existing options met all of those requirements simultaneously. The real cost of a wrong tray would not have shown up on an invoice. It would have shown up in the queue at lunchtime.
We drew up designs for a bespoke tray built around their specific requirements. Not around what was cheapest or quickest to source. Around what would actually work at the event. Several different prototypes were developed. Leith’s and their end client tested each one for feasibility before a unit was committed. We delivered 100 trays for a dry run of 100 meals. The dry run worked. We then delivered the full 110,000 trays ahead of the event, in flat-pack form to minimise handling and storage space, ready to be assembled quickly on site prior to service.
All 110,000 visitors were fed in record time. The service ran without disruption. Leith’s were rated the best ever event organiser by the Community Group as a result of the event.
The design of the trays and the advice and assistance from Evolution DC ensured a very successful outcome to a very challenging service-level focused event. It was an excellent partnership.
Martin James, Deputy General Manager, Compass Group
The airline tray was the obvious answer. It failed on cost at 110,000 units. We started with what the operation genuinely required, built a solution from the brief up, and then priced it correctly for the volume.
Leith’s brought the brief to us, we owned the solution from design through to delivery, and they focused on feeding 110,000 people. The touchpoints were ours to manage, not theirs.
The flat-pack delivery format was a direct example of challenging the inherited answer. Reduced handling, simplified on-site storage, made same-day assembly fast. The solution was designed for the event, not adapted from a shelf.
The dry run of 100 trays was not cautious project management. It was Optimise applied from the start. Test the solution against reality before you commit the full volume. Then deliver at scale with confidence.
If you have a problem that does not have a standard answer, we should talk.